Sidewalker: After listening to the other shows in this series, where IR scholars lay out their reasons for not going to war, I just can’t see why you let Makiya off so easily, Potter. By contrast, his reasoning (or was it emotionally driven intellectualism) seems naive at best and indulgent or retaliatory at worst.

Will humans ever stop dressing up acts of violence in cloaks of morality and justice?

Particularly to the last sentence- read Bobby’s above. I am sorry that I have not communicated well enough. I think sometimes an act of violence is an act of morality and justice in this real world that we all live in. This is not to say that you are right that this is what I am doing here. Without going over what I wrote months ago I will say simply that Makiya took the only position that he felt was right for him to take and because I feel that he is a very moral person, I respect that position as a moral position. Every other person interviewed in this “got it right” “got it wrong” series ( and notice the imbalance) had an entirely different circumstance and allegiance.

I may be writing this too late for you to ever read Sidewalker but I would be interested in your response or a discussion along those lines.

(Good to hear from you!)

Whether he was or was not culpable:

“Bishop,” said he, with a slowness which probably arose more from his dignity of soul than from the failing of his strength, “I have passed my life in meditation, study, and contemplation. I was sixty years of age when my country called me and commanded me to concern myself with its affairs. I obeyed. Abuses existed, I combated them; tyrannies existed, I destroyed them; rights and principles existed, I proclaimed and confessed them. Our territory was invaded, I defended it;… I have succored the oppressed, I have comforted the suffering. I tore the cloth from the altar, it is true; but it was to bind up the wounds of my country. I have always upheld the march forward of the human race, forward towards the light, and I have sometimes resisted progress without pity… I have done my duty according to my powers, and all the good that I was able. After which, I was hunted down, pursued, persecuted, blackened, jeered at, scorned, cursed, proscribed. For many years past, I with my white hair have been conscious that many people think they have the right to despise me; to the poor ignorant masses I present the visage of one damned. And I accept this isolation of hatred, without hating any one myself. Now I am eighty-six years old; I am on the point of death. What is it that you have come to ask of me?”

Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (Isabel F. Hapgood translation)

Did the end justify the means

“I did not think that I had the right to kill a man; but I felt it my duty to exterminate evil. I voted the end of the tyrant, that is to say, the end of prostitution for woman, the end of slavery for man, the end of night for the child. In voting for the Republic, I voted for that. I voted for fraternity, concord, the dawn. I have aided in the overthrow of prejudices and errors. The crumbling away of prejudices and errors causes light. We have caused the fall of the old world, and the old world, that vase of miseries, has become, through its upsetting upon the human race, an urn of joy.”

“Mixed joy,” said the Bishop.

“You may say troubled joy, and to-day, after that fatal return of the past, which is called 1814, joy which has disappeared! Alas! The work was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there.”

Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (Isabel F. Hapgood translation)

Anyway, I thought there was some interesting parallels between Chris’s interview with Makiya, and the Bishop’s ‘interview’ with the former “Member of the Convention”. I also want to say I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading this post. I’ve found it informative.

To OCP,

Thanks for the links to those pictures/paintings of Goya. I lived in Madrid for 6 years, so had the pleasure of standing in front of some of his works, in particular his “The Third of May 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid”. A painting that speaks to some of the events we’ve been discussing. Anyway, I hope your wish comes true, and that you, too, can visit the Prado and see them for yourself. I’ll be expecting a full report

The main point of Kanan Makiya’s thesis, as it stands at present, is that the biggest mistakes were made by Iraq’s new leaders. I’d like to know more about this. I wonder if, once the Iraqi military was sent home under the policy of Presto! democracy and Saddam’s oppression was replaced by a mix of too little neighbourhood security in some areas and too much bombing, torture and unrestrained occupation in others, it was ever going to be possible for the often changing leadership to work. Can they even leave the Green Zone? Also, just how much freedom have they had to form their own constitution and run their own affairs? For example, would the Iraqi administration actually be able to oppose the privatization of the country’s oil resources?

This is not to dismiss responsibility, but to insist the blame lies mainly with the Iraqi leadership seems another diversion from personal responsibility or an effort to keep favour with the masters.

After listening to the other shows in this series, where IR scholars lay out their reasons for not going to war, I just can’t see why you let Makiya off so easily, Potter. By contrast, his reasoning (or was it emotionally driven intellectualism) seems naive at best and indulgent or retaliatory at worst.

Will humans ever stop dressing up acts of violence in cloaks of morality and justice?

What agitates and prompts me here is in fact that I think it’s inappropriate and unfair to single out Makiya because he is here and becuase he is particularly open and vulnerable. I don’t feel he should be ashamed of himself either. I realize, after reading and listening, that there is this need for some others to say that to him- “you got it wrong!”

I think it’s misplaced anger about what path this country has taken.

I have less of a problem with Makiya openly brooding or meditating on his role and criticizing other’s roles, and assessing how he sees things past present future. His ruminations, insights could only be about just what you suggest- mistakes made, lessons learned. But goodness knows if those in a similar situation in the future would ever consult his (future) book on it or take heed. As was suggested everyone comes to their present moment with their own angle of vision.

I would have to add to your recommendationa, because it’s so present with me, and because I feel it SO powerful, Ken Burn’s entire series “The War”.

What is amazing to me is that the lessons learned through these attempts at transmission about war and what war brings and are not necessarily the lessons that you would expect- that we should never engage in these activities again. For some it’s that we should be ever more vigilent, ever more prepared, ever stronger etc. They take us with them.

My intent here was not merely based upon hope, but the intent is one of hope and optimism. That Mr. Makiya might ruminate on these matters in a form that may help future people who will live through similar circumstances. It seems completely inappropriate to single out one human being for a very complex set of circumstances. I don’t think it’s appropriate, nor necessary, nor sufficient, for him to publicly brood upon this matter in such a way as to implicate or indict himself to assuage his guilt or provide a means to assuage our culpability through a cathartic means. This is neither productive in solving the current crisis, nor helpful in addressing the problem of the future, for I think it reasonable and plausible that there will be times and places out on the horizon for which people will have to grapple in exile with a tyranny that grows forth within the physical geography of their homeland, their place of birth.

Mr. Makiya’s coming to terms with his experience and his role in this matter, the good and the bad, the warts and the angelic wings and halos, and those of others who have played a role in this matter, could provide wise counsel for future human beings, to assist them in finding their way through treacherous territory. As an example of this, I highly recommend If the War Goes On … reflections on war and politics by Hermann Hesse. I also highly recommend viewing the movie Bonhoeffer Both of these works give expression to understanding how people grappled with the situation of living through their country of origin falling into totalitarian rule with its attendant behavior as a collective perpetrator of mass murder and carnage, some the most horrific collective, criminal activity experienced by any human beings. This is not merely my judgment, this has thus far been history’s judgment, and history’s advice and counsel on these matters is very clear and unequivocal: we should never engage upon such activities again. I also recommend a viewing of Francisco de Goya’s works known as his Black Paintings and The Disasters of War and the book Goya by Robert Hughes, for it addresses one human being’s reaction to the mass carnage of insurgency and counter-insurgency and the complications of personal feelings and insights within the same context. I believe Mr. Mailer stated (approximately): If one cannot change the world, then one should at least try to understand it. These works have given me solace and understanding, and provide the potential for creating a space for grace, within my own context and epoch. Alas, we all drink from these waters at the place in the river that make sense for ourselves; my only wish is for all to find such a place to drink and to find the seat of their very personal conscience

If the thread would be so generous, and indulge me, I will leave off with an excerpt from Herman Hesse’s Forward to the 1946 Edition of If the War Goes On:

Since m first awakening thirty years ago my moral reaction to every great political event has always arisen instinctively and without effort on my part. My judgments have never wavered. Since I am an utterly unpolitical man, I myself have been astonished at the reliability of my reactions, and I have often pondered about the sources of this moral instinct, about the teachers and guides who, despite my lack of systematic concern with politics, so molded me that I have always been sure of my judgment and offered a more than average resistance to mass psychoses and psychological infections of every kind.

OCP- You put a lot on the plate for Mr. Makiya in your posts of November 15th. If I may attempt to answer from what I have heard listening to him:

To the question of whether Makiya considered that a remedy might have unleashed worse forces than keeping the Hussein regime I have heard him taking measure recently and he worried that the numbers might perhaps be creeping towards those levels. ( Do we even have the numbers to compare?). Lives are a very important measure for him and of course this weigh on every feeling person. It seems that he thought that keeping the regime in place, one that would outlive Saddam- in his mid 60’s when we undertook this- was the higher risk in terms of potential lost lives. To be sure our presence is responsible for many deaths. I don’t know how you can separate out those deaths from the sectarian violence that is the result of many years of oppression and a change in the ruling class. I don’t think such “calculations” are the sole driving force. Quality of life matters. Those who lived in the Warsaw ghetto or the concentration camps- to use an extreme example, would have gladly given their lives to die seeing US warplanes above dropping bombs. But it’s also true we have no right to assume that or make those decisions that others should give their lives for that. It’s a moral dilemma whether ( or how) to act on behalf of those who cannot act for themselves.

I would like to hear Samantha Power’s thinking on this.

Also, I assume, there are some things you just can’t know from the outside of a tightly held tyrannical regime until you are already there. The unleashed forces, had they been better managed, might have been contained. Maybe they would have burst forth later because those cracks were so deep. The religious ones go back centuries.

I don’t think that Makiya is trying to sidestep responsibility. Nor do I feel he is wrong or unjustified in asking us to split this into two parts:

a)removing the regime ( including the means and the moment) and b) how to manage beyond that, to contain any forces that had been building and rebuild Iraq as one country.

To the part a) for many it was a “no-brainer”. For me it was always, as I said, a matter of means and moment. I thought that Afghanistan was quite enough for us to deal with- horrified as I was at what was happening to innocent Afghani’s: the dead, the displaced. I thought Iraq should have been on the collective world’s screen ( the UN is so inadequate, ALAS). That it was pushed to the top of our “to-do” list by the Bush administration at that particular moment, connecting it to 9/11, and misrepresented, oversold as an imminent threat to us by BushCheneyRumsfeldRice &neocons and their grand scheme, and supported in the Congress ( some thinking we were playing bad cop to Europe’s good cop as Saddam was playing both ends), to me that was THE monumental craven act. Those in charge starting at the top, have not been held accountable!!! Those who have not held those accountable are themselves accountable!!! All else is footnotes for me. All this “got it right” “got it wrong” is footnotes and, in a way, diversion.

But this is a nice philosophical discussion.

To the question given the potential for ongoing excesses in violence that “show no end”- that’s Makiya’s part “b”. The answer from Makiya I believe would be (is) Iraqi’s are in a civil war now. They have to decide whether to be a country, and if so how to organize themselves as such. It took the US awhile so 4 years does not seem long by that standard. Could those forces have been contained or averted even with the wisest foreign intervention? I personally do not think so given the cruelty of Saddam’s regime and previous history, including colonial. It’s too much to ask so many to forgive and forget years of injustice and repression of such a large part of the population. (It is also true that Saddam’s regime was not all bad for those who cooperated with the regime.)

The best shot would have been a perfect and immediate reconstruction with oil revenues flowing in. I question Bush’s initial motives. I think he was craven in his use of Makiya’s humanitarian concerns to promote his own agenda/s. So in a way the insurgency has prevented a lot: ie our corporations from coming in wholesale and taking over even more.

Should Makiya have known that those internal forces had been building.? Did he? Yes and probably, I would say. He also said and says that he still thought that Saddam had to be removed. To wait it out was worse.

So regarding the lost lives, orphaned children, the refugees, old and young, and add newly created militant jihadists, that are the result- how do we, in our anger, divide up the responsibility for that? How far back and how wide do we go in assessing responsibility? Do we lay it all on Makiya? Do we focus on Makiya because he’s easier to get to an interview than Dick Cheney? The Kagans? Kristol? Perle? Firth? Wolfowitz? Bernard Lewis? Daniel Pipes?

Do we do this because we are angry, do not want to accept responsibility ourselves? As Americans, this was in our name. Many of us we never acceded to this action in the first place and want us out right now. We are now angry at both Republicans and Democrats because there is no movement, ”no end in sight”.

Another question that should be asked: Would those who would reverse time and have had us do nothing at all ( voiced as “some something”, or “continued sanctions”- flawed as they are ) be prepared to accept responsibility for those ongoing consequences?

In 10-15 years what will things looks like now that “we” ( collectively) have taken this path? Will we be talking about “blame”? or will the US be taking credit also for setting things in motion, some of which may turn out good? Whatever- we will be paying for the negatives of this for many years to come and this administration will never escape the judgment that it took us to war (WAR!) precipitously, prepared to deal only the best case scenarios (!!!) informed by cherry- picked intelligence(!!!). They will never escape having mislead us, abused the trust of all those necessary to undertake such an adventure, including of the Congress, the media, an the American people. And we let them.

EXECUTION

Don’t waste time looking back right? We are where we are and we have to deal with it.

Gross mistakes have been made but lets move on, our very survival depends on it.

It’s interesting that that stratagy works out so well for you.

It is a dilemma I deal with for sure – rehash the past, confront the demons, risk ruining the present, disrupting the future.

You trump me with you compassion.

Do you feel my forced silence?

As the rug bubbles up and the threads stretch thin, I ask questions quickly, quietly, not at all.

In my hung over haze I wonder what I’m after, consequences, repercussions, accountability, guilt, apologies, self congratulations, lessons learned, redemption…

I want you to want to tell me the answer.

You have moved on to another question

Don’t let me let you do this

Very well said, and very sophisticated. I would like to use this quote as a jumping off point to illustrate the idea that if something doesn’t work out in the long run, that does not “therefore” mean that it was “a mistake” in the first place. Association does not prove cause and effect.

As we analyze Iraq and our relationship to it, we witness a sort of prism, a “looking glass” if you will, through which the nature of time itself changes. Like Einstein said “Time is relative”. And if we can agree on this, we can understand how different people perceive events ‘differently’.